“Fucking nothing, quit asking questions. Let’s go.”
I had to rush to keep up with him. “You bet I’ll ask questions, but what was that all about? Brian was just talking to me—”
“Um?” James pretended not to understand.
“What, one of them can’t even talk to me anymore?”
“Are you fucking done whining?”
“You guys are really weird. Why do you hate each other so much?”
He turned the vape pen on right before reaching an emergency exit.
“Does he know about Ari?”
At that point, James flung open the emergency exit door leading to the outside stairs, then stared at me.
“No, of course not. Unless you wanna tell him while you make googly eyes at each other doing your fucking homework.”
I tensed up.
“Do you think I want to get mixed up in this crap?”
“So why’d you tell Taylor?”
His question startled me.
“Do you think I told Taylor?”
“Well? You were the only one who knew. And then, lo and behold, they broke up. Do you like assholes?”
James’s words startled me.
“You’ve believed for all this time that I was the one who told Taylor?” I screamed loudly.
“Well, didn’t you?” James looked down at me condescendingly, continuing to vape.
“Absolutely not. Why I would I?”
“Because he likes you.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Who?” I asked, confused.
James blew a giant cloud of smoke out the door then turned around to look at me.
“Quit acting like Sleeping Beauty. You understood me.”
“When you told me about Ari, I thought that was a joke. And I thought you trusted me.” I cleared my throat, annoyed with myself for having just said that.
“I thought you trusted me, too, but when I told you I didn’t tell Taylor about your brother you almost didn’t believe me,” he complained.
How does Taylor always find everything out?I wondered, doing an about face.
“What are you doing?”
I heard James’s voice call me when I was already halfway down the hallway.
“I’m heading to class, Hunter.”
